From Left Field: A Hot Baseball Romance (Diamond Brides Book 7) by Mindy Klasky Page B

was one hell of a bribe. Too bad it didn’t work.”
    She nodded slowly before she enunciated, “Go home. I have to get to bed. Tomorrow, Paws will start fundraising, so we can kick your ass when it comes to bidding on the farm.”
    He didn’t have the heart to tell her she was slurring her words. “We’ll see about that. As you said earlier tonight, may the best person win.”
    He didn’t feel like the best person as he watched her turn back to the door. He didn’t feel like a good person at all. Instead, he was a person who wanted to rip her clothes off, who wanted to bury his face against her soft skin, who wanted to breathe in that soap and shampoo scent as he figured out why it had taken him so many years to realize that Haley Thurman wasn’t just one of the guys.
    But he made himself hold every muscle still as she let herself into her house, as she greeted her ecstatic dogs, as she blew him a saucy kiss before she shut the door. Or maybe that was just a sisterly kiss. How the hell was he supposed to know?
    The grass was even wetter on the way back to his own lonely house.

CHAPTER 4

    Two and a half weeks later, Haley looked around Club Joe, amazed at how the coffee shop had been transformed. In the past hour, the front counter where people usually ordered their gourmet coffees had been transformed into an extravagant landscape of sliced cakes and pies, with tempting brownies and cookies filling in the few empty spaces. The small tables scattered around the popular gathering spot had been converted to display spaces for some of the most elaborate desserts Haley had ever seen. There were towering coconut cakes, triple-layer caramel cakes, even a fresh-baked stack pie just like the one a local chef had used to win a reality TV show a few months back.
    Haley turned to Kate and said with awe in her voice, “You’re amazing.”
    Kate laughed. “It helps to know people who know people.”
    Haley could only shake her head at the understatement. “So, are we ready to open the doors?”
    “As ready as we’ll ever be.”
    As Kate had planned the bake sale, she’d quickly discovered that health officials frowned on an animal shelter hosting a food event. Therefore, she’d called in all her markers, setting up the sale at one of the trendiest cafes in town.
    And the tactic seemed to work. People were lined up outside; the queue stretched all the way down the block. A few people had brought their dogs, and many more wore T-shirts proudly emblazoned with pets. One woman sported a headband with cat ears, and she’d drawn whiskers across her cheeks.
    Haley took one last look at the baked goods, and then she nodded to the Club Joe employees who staffed the door and the cash register. “All right, then! Let’s see what we can do!”
    And that was the last complete sentence she strung together for almost two hours.
    The crowd was amazing. Everyone had complimentary things to say about Paws for Love. Several people had adopted animals in the past. A lot more said they were going to stop by in the next week or so. A fish bowl set beside the register began to fill up with donations, and the staff was soon overwhelmed by sales of individual slices of delectable treats.
    Kate’s real inspiration, though, had been in selling whole desserts—entire cakes and pies that buyers could take home for a special family dinner or a party. Paws had originally considered having the bake sale on a weeknight, trying to snag tired office workers who wanted a sugar boost before they completed the trek home, but Kate had realized that a weekend made more sense, lending a party air to make big bucks on the finest gourmet treats Raleigh could offer.
    Haley was making a record of the entire event, snapping photos on her phone. At first, she tried for artistic angles, trying to catch the afternoon sunlight glinting on pastries, the shimmer of powdered sugar, the gleam of ganache. Soon, though, she was grabbing shots of the excited crowd. And